


It Eats at You

by NeverJustBusiness



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Depression, M/M, Queen beatrice being a HBIC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:19:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverJustBusiness/pseuds/NeverJustBusiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's left when there's nothing at all? They say there's a silver lining, but the millenia have not let you see it... until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Eats at You

It eats at you as sure as a cancer, poisoning any happiness even if its within reach. There is no part of you left that isn’t shattered. Broken. The jagged parts of you, you believe, will never find its like and you are tired of trying. The darkness seeps from your mind like a miasma, smothering and deep. Years upon decades upon centuries upon millenia drip-drop-drips down as proof that you will never be more than you are. 

_You couldn’t keep her._

_You couldn’t protect them._

_You let them starve._

_You couldn’t save them, those that **burned** for your rebellion. _

_You couldn’t be what your own children needed you to be and its a miracle even one still calls you anything but monster._

_You can’t even prove for a second that you are more than what **He** made you into._

Your very expression is schooled by the millenia into naught but glares, smirks and grimaces. You let nothing show, parading your strength as if you have any. You are stoic, impassable and firm, despite being, really, none of those things.

Sleep is stolen as sure as anything ever was. One bowl smoked becomes two becomes three until you’re five in and you can’t feel your nose but you can’t sleep, can never really sleep. Sure, dozing is practically your existence, but sleep never really comes until you will either sleep or die. 

Today is to be no different from any other.

You get up, get dressed and brush your teeth. You get your morning coffee and try a new pastry from the vendor down the street. You have witnessed this vendor’s whole family history and he will never charge you more than a euro for everything no matter how much you attempt otherwise. 

His grandfather died right next to you. You seem to think he deserved better.

You walk into the palace and greet your queen, rolling your eyes while she fixes your tie like she does at least once a week. The princesses all curtsy, even the grown ones. The princes either bow or doff invisible caps. Smartasses. You don’t realize Bea was talking until she whaps you upside the head… or at least tries to. 

“What?”

“You have a visitor, my boy.” You strain not to correct her on who, exactly, is the younger in this pair when the flash of amused violet catches your eye.

Oh.

There is one part of your life that the darkness has not yet stolen from you. If anything, the deepest part of hell brought him to you when you least deserved it. You know the irony in his greatest moment being your worst, but since it meant he is standing here, looking like he does, smiling the kind of smile you know is just for you right in front of your royal family… you can’t find the self-loathing enough to really care. 

Matthew just keeps smiling, moving closer until you can’t see much else but his eyes. He nips at you and you, being an idiot, jerk back as if he really had bit. He chuckles and nudges and you can’t seem to remember why in the hell you ever thought you could live without him. 

Margriet laughs and kisses his cheeks, introducing her grandchildren for the millionth time. Not that he seems to care and, like the twitterpated weakling you are, you love him for it. 

Bea whaps you upside the head for real this time, and demands in very irate Dutch (so he can’t understand) that you take the day off because what kind of suitor are you to make him wait like this. The heat filling your face at her choice of words is stamped down with great haste. Goddamn that nosy bint. She was definitely snooping in your desk. Again. (You adore her, though. Endlessly.) 

You spend the day with his arm in yours. Neither of you are very gifted with small talk or words in general, so silence reigns over most of it. There’s not many places he hasn’t been, but you show him anyways. Your English sucks and your French is worse but he is patient. You tell stories no one alive could attest to and share more than you ever really would if he wasn’t, well, him. 

He is patient. He is kind. He is everything you’ve ever wanted and nothing like you’ve ever expected. He gives bits of his food to stray dogs and has a few coins for every hungry-looking Gypsy child sitting on the street. He makes really funny, sometimes mean comments to you in a whisper about the hopelessly nouveau-riche Americans filling the coffeeshops. He chats up the Canadians in both languages and directs them on places no travel guide will ever tell them about. You buy him a bowl and you smoke with him draped over you, passing the pipe between kisses. You’ve seen him kill a hundred men with his bare hands. You’ve seen him tear at his own skin in a self-loathing you know too well to fault him for. He is a monster and an angel wrapped in humanoid firament and, God help you, you love him.

God help you, because as the day draws to a close and you’ve bought half the booze in Den Haag (he had most of it) you keep pressing him against any wall that stands in shadow. God help you because you can’t get enough right up until you tumble into a bed you don’t know and just paid for in a hotel you’ve never been to until now. He claws at your back as you push into him and its all you can do not to come apart. 

God help you because you finally sleep.

God help you because when morning comes, you ask. You ask something you have no right to ask, that you don’t deserve an answer to. 

He stares at you in that bleary way the well-fucked have in the mornings and, against all logic, you begin to panic. The darkness threatens to take this away, too, to pull him from you and leave you gasping at any and all attempts at something of your own. Your entire empire was forfeit to your lack of will, of worth. Why should he be any different? Years of this have let you wear your face as a mask, betraying nothing at all, bleak and sharp as it ever was. 

He starts crying and you panic even harder. What did you do? How did you fuck this up? You go over every word that stole away from your lips again and again. You try to find a way that you could have hurt him with them and find none. You forgot the ring in your desk like the ridiculously stupid brute you are, is that it?

Its not until he nearly throws himself at you, panting the answer you DEFINITELY don’t deserve, that you realize what the hell just happened.

Sometimes, you forget that you’re not the only one of this pair who is shattered. He is the glue that holds you together but it often slips notice that in asking him that question, you gave him something long kept out of his reach.

In asking him to be yours, you became his, and his alone. 

(You ask him again six months later in front of both queens and countries and, when he starts crying again, you hold his hands until he can finally say “I do” for more to hear than just you.)


End file.
